Category: Hiking

Got in another Umstead State Park Sycamore Trail hike in today. My feet are suffering a bit, but comparing the three times I have done this hike something should be hurting with those improvements. See this comparison at connect.garmincom

I was able to get outside a little this weekend with a Saturday ride on the American Tobacco Trail with Emily and another Creaky Knee Hiking Club event today to make it two for two on the exercise front. The rest of my time this weekend went to watching Quinn's baseball game the Miracle League Field in Cary on Friday and trying to get this blog working again after something ate my .htaccess file. Godaddy support said to check the DNS setup that I was not pointing to the correct server. Sorry guys, nothing changed on that side of things. I am pretty sure it was a plugin that ate it, so I am a little bit afraid of the W3 total cache. I might try it again after a complete back up of the site. Here are the exercise stats…

It has been a busy few weeks on the photography front. I spent two weekends shooting the kids at the First Baptist Cary Upward basketball program. The first weekend I did a test of shooting the players as they entered through the tunnel during player introductions. I ended up going back the second weekend and shooting them again with a background light shining on the wall behind the tunnel to kill the shadow. I had the best results shooting at about 200th of second f16 trying to freeze the kids and give me some leeway on the focus with better depth of field as they ran through tunnel. I would have liked to shoot at 250th, but my Hong Kong ebay radio slaves don't sync above 200th of second. I used a photoshop action to put the Upward logo on the the prints with permission from the Upward folks. I am happy with the final prints and hope the kids like them as a gift from the church.

On the exercise front, I got in a couple of hikes in the over the past month and a training ride for the upcoming American Diabetes Association Tour de Cure. Since I am the official volunteer photographer I can't ride the tour, but I registered as a rider to raise money to cover some of the costs the ADA covers for me like my room at the overnight hotel. I will get my donation page up shortly and hope you will consider making a donation.

So I did, 7.5 miles when you count the parts to and from the car. For my first real hiking experience, I have to admit I had a great time. Even if my feet rebelled a bit on the last half. But who can complain about a couple of blisters when I know kids with EB that twist the wrong way in their chair and get twice as many. The closest thing I have ever done to hiking was a visit to Bryce and Zion national parks back in 1990. Then once while at Umstead state park a few years ago. Which incidentally, is where I hiked this past Sunday. On that one, I decided to take quick stroll around a lake. The outcome was not good and I even blogged about it back then. Long story short – ticks.

So some of my high school friends cranked up this "Creaky Knee" hiking club on Facebook as way to keep in touch between reunions and have a little outdoor fun. There were eight of us on Sunday with some fairly strong walkers in the group. The Sycamore trail at Umstead is well maintained, but you have to watch out for the exposed roots and rocks along most portions. The elevation gain according the GPS, I actually used my Edge 705 for the hike, reported just above 800 feet. The distance from the picnic shelter, where we started, came out to about 7.2 miles. The GPS data is available at connect.garmin.com. Once I get my feet healed up and some better shoes, I can't wait to try it again.